Worldwide Stores - Duplicate Content Question
-
Hello,
We recently added new store views for our primary domain for different countries.
Our primary url: www.store.com
Different Countries URLS:
And so forth and so on. This resulted in an almost immediate rankings drop for several keywords which we feel is a result of duplicate content creation. We've thousands of pages on our primary site.
We've assigned a "no follow" tags to all store views for now, and trying to roll back the changes we did.
However, we've seen some stores launching in different countries with same content, but with a country specific extensions like .co.uk, .co.nz., .com.au.
At this point, it appears we have three choices:
1. Remove/Change duplicate content in country specific urls/store views.
2. Launch using .co.uk, .com.au with duplicate content for now.
3. Launch using .co.uk, .com.au etc with fresh content for all stores.
Please keep in mind, option 1, and 3 can get very expensive keeping hundreds of products in untested territories. Ideally, we would like test first and then scale.
However, we'd like to avoid any duplicate penalties on our main domain. Thanks for your help and answers on the same.
-
Hi!
From what I many have understood, the duplication content problem is probably affecting your site because the main shop is in English (www.store.com) and the /au/, /uk/ and /nz/ too are in English and with exact content you use for the main shop.
When you are targeting different countries where is spoken the same language, as it is in this case, it is really suggested to follow these practices:
- try to "localize" the most you can the different countries shops, using local currencies, addresses, timezones;
- try to use the local variation of the language, as - for instance - the English spoken in UK is quite different from the one spoken in the USA. I know that this not really an option right now, because of the costs and time needed, but I urge to plan it in long term;
- use the tag rel="alternate" hreflang. This tag has been especially created for these situations, in order to tell to Google that a page - i.e.: www.store.com/uk/ - should be shown to the users from Uk. More and very easy to follow instructions about how to implement it can be found here
Remember that you can use this rel also at a level page, so you can maintain the subcarpet organization of your store.
This especially useful in order to have just one site to think when it comes to link building. And the different link building campaigns you may start for any targeted country will benefit the site as a whole.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Website Redesign - Duplicate Content?
I hired a company to redesign our website.there are many pages like the example below that we are downsizing content by 80%.(believe me, not my decision)Current page: https://servicechampions.com/air-conditioning/New page (on test server):https://servicechampions.mymwpdesign.com/air-conditioning/My question to you is, that 80% of content that i am losing in the redesign, can i republish it as a blog?I know that google has it indexed. The old page has been live for 5 years, but now 80% of it will no longer be live. so can it be a blog and gain new (keep) seo value?What should i do with the 80% of content i am losing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CamiloSC0 -
Duplicate content but different pages?
Hi there! Im getting LOTS of "duplicate content" pages but the thing is they are different pages. My website essentially is a niche video hosting site with embedded videos from Youtube. Im working on adding personal descriptions to each video but keeping the same video title (should I re-word it from the original also? Any help?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sarevme0 -
Content question please help
Would content behind a drop down on this site Https://www.homeleisuredirect.com/pool_tables/english_pool_tables/ you have to click the - more about English pool tables text under the video Work just as well for SEO as content on the page like this site http://www.pooltablesonline.co.uk/uk-slate-bed-pool-tables.asp
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Hreflang tag could solve any duplicate content problems on the different versions??
I have run across a couple of articles recently suggesting that using the hreflang tag could solve any SEO problems associated with having duplicate content on the different versions (.co.uk, .com, .ca, etc). here is an example here: http://www.emarketeers.com/e-insight/how-to-use-hreflang-for-international-seo/ Over to you and your technical colleagues, I think ….
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JordanBrown0 -
Duplicate Page Content Errors on Moz Crawl Report
Hi All, I seem to be losing a 'firefighting' battle with regards to various errors being reported on the Moz crawl report relating to; Duplicate Page Content Missing Page Title Missing Meta Duplicate Page Title While I acknowledge that some of the errors are valid (and we are working through them), I find some of them difficult to understand... Here is an example of a 'duplicate page content' error being reported; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com (which is obviously our homepage) Is reported to have 'duplicate page content' compared with the following pages; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/guides/gratuities http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/cruise-line-deals/holland-america-2014-offers/?order_by=brochure_lead_difference http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/about-us/meet-the-team/craig All 3 of those pages are completely different hence my confusion... This is just a solitary example, there are many more! I would be most interested to hear what people's opinions are... Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Duplicate content for hotel websites - the usual nightmare? is there any solution other than producing unique content?
Hiya Mozzers I often work for hotels. A common scenario is the hotel / resort has worked with their Property Management System to distribute their booking availability around the web... to third party booking sites - with the inventory goes duplicate page descriptions sent to these "partner" websites. I was just checking duplication on a room description - 20 loads of duplicate descriptions for that page alone - there are 200 rooms - so I'm probably looking at 4,000 loads of duplicate content that need rewriting to prevent duplicate content penalties, which will cost a huge amount of money. Is there any other solution? Perhaps ask booking sites to block relevant pages from search engines?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Reinforcing Rel Canonical? (Fixing Duplicate Content)
Hi Mozzers, We're having trouble with duplicate content between two sites, so we're looking to add some oomph to the rel canonical link elements we put on one of our sites pointing towards the other to help speed up the process and give Google a bigger hint. Would adding a hyperlink on the "copying" website pointing towards the "original" website speed this process up? Would we get in trouble if added about 80,000 links (1 on each product page) with a link to the matching product on the other site? For example, we could use text like "Buy XY product on Other Brand Name and receive 10% off!"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Duplicate Content issue on pages with Authority and decent SERP results
Hi, I'm not sure what the best thing to do here is. I've got quite a few duplicate page errors in my campaign. I must admit the pages were originally built just to rank a keyword variation. e.g. Main page keyword is [Widget in City] the "duplicate" page is [Black Widget in City] I guess the normal route to deal with duplicate pages is to add a canonical tag and do a 304 redirect yea? Well these pages have some page Authority and are ranking quite well for their exact keywords, what do I do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SpecialCase0